home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback

 

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Labor's Historic No to Bush's War: Joann Wypijewski reports; Who is Barry Rubin? Inside the Israeli Pro-War Lobby; What's Next for the Peace Movement? Elected Greens in Oregon Push for Impeachment; Dirty Bombs: the Legacy of Depleted Uranium. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Recent Stories

April 15, 2003

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Robert Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the US Must Leave

Dr. Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again

Robert Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad

Col. Dan Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions

Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/15

 

April 14, 2003

Chris Floyd
Bush's War Without End

Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning

Wayne Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?

Shahid Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free

Hani Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks

Terry Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train

John Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda

Patrick Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence, Misery and Poverty in Iraq

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/14

 

April 12 / 13, 2003

Carol Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph Story

Wayne Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III

John Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling of the Saddam Statue

Kathy and Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine

William Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation

Wallace Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin

Ann Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial Case

Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar

Zeljko Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars

Ishikawa Jun
The Song of Mars

Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board

Adam Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and the News

Poets' Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/12

 

April 11, 2003

Omar Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam

Ron Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded

David Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq

Paul de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field

Anthony Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy

Mas'ood Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger

Michael Neumann
Now What?

Michael Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream

Stew Albert
Oh Freedom

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/11

Website of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds

 

April 10, 2003

Zoltan Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier the Victory, the Harder the Peace

Uri Avnery
The Night After

Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire

David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel Abbas

Jeremy Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?

Robert Jensen
The Unseen War

Geoffrey Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution: A Patriot Attack on America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad

Hammond Guthrie
Rumors of War

Joseph Heller
Nately's Old Man

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/10

Website of the Day
The Third Page

 

April 9, 2003

David Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes, the War Is About Oil

Doug Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and War

Susan Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement

David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It

John Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do as It Damn Well Pleases

Akiva Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance with the Christian Right

Ray Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide: Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/9

 

April 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental

Richard Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches

John Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam: a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures

Ben Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"

Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations May Have Violated Federal Law

Anthony Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle

Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"

Ahmad Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy

Wallace Gagne
Baghdad Babble

Harry Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair Summit

Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in a Baghdad Hospital

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/8

M. Shahid Alam
The Israelization of America

 

April 7, 2003

Todd Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers

David N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University: The CIA is Back on Campus

Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce

Gideon Levy
America is Not a Role Model

Diane Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War

Jules Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin

James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush Shake Gerry's Hand?

Robert Fisk
The Twisted Language of War

Patrick Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah

John Mackay
War and Art

Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/7

 

April 5, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is in Shambles

Anne Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem

Uri Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere

Chris Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush

William Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...

Gila Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers

Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?

Joanne Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies

John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders from the Lord

Romi Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead

Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with Other Mideast Regimes

Mary Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight

William MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism

Ron Jacobs
War and Occupation

Bernie Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God

Mark Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo

Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini

Poets' Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz

Jeffrey St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud

Norman Madarasz
Canada and the War

 

April 4, 2003

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame

John Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?

David Krieger
The Meaning of Victory

Tom Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support or Treason?

Adam Federman
The Absence of War

Vijay Prashad
There Are No More Arguments

Tom Stephens
The End of the Innocence

Mickey Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing Bush Speak

Pierre Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality Show

Hammond Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/04

 

April 3, 2003

Uri Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and the Theater of Operations

David Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer

David Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused to Fight

Michael Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits

Ramzy Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?

Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears

Anton Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon

Alison Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie

Bruce Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice

Eliot Katz
War's First Week

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/03

 

Hot Stories

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.


Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!

Subscribe Online


Search CounterPunch

 

April 16, 2003

Don't Tell Me "I Told You So"

Mourning Iraq

by CAROL NORRIS

Please don't talk to me of "precision bombing" and "liberation." Don't talk of "minimal loss of life" and cheering Iraqis. Don't come with your "I told you so." and your "See, the war wasn't that bad."

Because I know better. I know there was little that was precise and liberating about this war. I know while many Iraqis are thrilled to be done with Saddam; they are equally appalled at how this war has played out.

And what of your "I told you so"?

You said the reason we must go to war and flout international law and the UN is because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped. I see none, despite the attempts of the Bush administration to concoct them.

You said we must go to war despite the opposition of the majority of the peoples of the world, galvanizing many of them against us because Saddam was a threat to my safety. He is a despicable man who has done horrible things.

If he were able, he would've surely fought brutally. And he would've fought to best of his ability, which is what I imagine he did. But apparently, he was not the threat we thought he was.

So you want me to be proud that the Bush and Blair administrations have defeated a militarily impotent, awful tyrant by way of leaving countless children already weakened from over a decade of sanctions and random US bombs, motherless, homeless and limbless; leaving hospitals and relief agencies looted and depleted to the point of being ineffectual; leaving a decimated infrastructure; leaving thousands with nothing to drink but water contaminated with human waste; leaving annihilated houses and neighborhoods and shops and public spaces.

You want me to be proud of killing immeasurable numbers of men, women and children. And they will be immeasurable because the staggering power of US bombs has turned many of my fellow human beings into "pink mist," the horrific previously-coined term used for what often remains of human life as it rises from the ground after the bombs drop. I am not proud.

I am horrified and sickened and grief-stricken.

I am grief-stricken for the American and British soldiers and their families who have suffered and who mourn injury and death and, like those from the first Gulf war, may very well suffer further from the horrible effects of depleted uranium exposure, sacrificing their quality of life for perhaps the rest of their lives over a war that never should have been. I am horrified and grief-stricken that some in our government have called Iraq a "deeply sick" society, that some of our soldiers have been indoctrinated so profoundly they have forgotten they are supposed to be liberators as they talk of hating Iraq and looking forward to "taking out" a few people, one soldier saying with chilling glibness, "The chick was in the way" in response to killing an innocent civilian woman.

I am horrified and grief-stricken that the Bush administration and the media unconscionably parade a staged photo-op, where a meager couple of hundred people were corralled to fill a cameraperson's lens, as US marines - not Iraqis - pulled down a statue of Saddam, for all the world to see, using this a "proof" that all Iraqis unite in joyful liberation. The Bush administration knows the people of the US we will cling to this image, desperately wanting to believe it is true, trying to push what many of us know in our hearts - that this war was brutal and wrong - out of our minds.

I am grief-stricken because this photo-op is the cruel addition of insult to injury to the Iraqi people. It unflinchingly demeans their pain, and obscures their reality. Where are the photos of the rest of the millions of Iraqis?

Where are the photos of those who have been devastated by the loss of entire families, those who desperately fight one another for a looted chair, who are angry at the US for not protecting them, scrounging for food and filthy water amidst the unexploded cluster bombs and tons and tons of birth-defect causing depleted uranium, hiding in what is left of their homes, if they are lucky, terrified, shell-shocked, and worn?

I am horrified by the colossal hypocrisy of the Bush administration that uses the US-orchestrated voices of a couple of hundred people as ultimate proof of the goodness of this war, yet when millions upon millions of people around the world raised their voices in protest for months on end, Bush relegated them to an inconsequential "focus group."

I am horrified and saddened that the media at times prints grossly misleading polls, saying the majority of Americans are for the war, using sample sizes that wouldn't be considered representative in any credible scientific study. (One major paper, for example, stated 63% of the people of an area with over 6.7 million were for the war. They polled 204 people.) Polls are used to manipulate opinion, not quantify it.

I am horrified and saddened further at how the media has perpetuated the ridiculously simplistic and false assertion that opposing the war equals lack of concern for the troops. Those of us who have voiced our opposition to the war are concerned for the safety and welfare of all involved, including the troops.

And we know it is absurd to state otherwise.

I am sickened, yet not surprised, that of all the looting of all the buildings that has turned Baghdad into a free-for-all, one of the only places the US forces guarded with any real effort was the Ministry of Oil.

And I am horrified and grief-stricken over the complete pillaging and destroying of a museum beyond price that housed precious, irreplaceable artifacts from the birth of human civilization. A museum that held reminders that you and I and those the Bush and Blair administrations have killed for no justifiable reason are ultimately descended from the same human cradle.

So, please don't talk to me fortified with TV network slogans and easily evoked sound bites because, like millions around the world, I know better. Come ready to engage in a true dialogue, with well-reasoned facts gotten from outside as well as inside the US. And please, speak in tones reserved for respect for the dead and the grieving. Because along with much of the world; I am in mourning.

Carol Norris is a writer and psychotherapist. She is a member of CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She can be contacted at writing4justice@planet-save.com.



Today's Features

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Robert Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the US Must Leave

Dr. Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again

Robert Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad

Col. Dan Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions

Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/15

 

Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /